New addition to the "family"

Despite my protesting, Darwin got a ball python yesterday (for free) from a BYU Professor who is in charge of one of the field trips Dar is going on this summer. Luckily we aren't allowed to have pets at our apartment (except for our 1 beta fish) so the snake is a school pet :) Dar is pretty excited about it and didn't sleep well last night because he was worried the snake would get out during it's one night stay at our place. And, sure enough...the snake tried to escape!! All of this was going on while I was sleeping peacefully, and Darwin was getting up periodically to check on the snake. The snake currently does not have a name, but that shouldn't last much longer. Darwin is having his junior high students put names in a suggestion box and then the students get to vote on the top names so I'll keep you posted on the name for his currently nameless snake. The woman he got the snake from actually breeds them, which is her plan for retirement. When we went to her house yesterday to pick the snake up, she took us down to her basement into a little pantry-like area, but it was full of shelves with containers that each had a snake in it. She's got over 80 snakes in her basement!!! No thank you! Anyway, she was telling Dar about the great money it brings in and she was trying to talk him into getting started with breeding snakes as well. I told him it MAY be a possibility when the kids we don't have yet are grown up and all moved out of the house, and then he looked at me with pouty eyes like he wanted to get involved with it now. Haha. Fat chance. First of all, we are still in an apartment that doesn't allow pets. Second, I don't like snakes and refuse to touch them. Third, he'd be doing all the work himself and he's already swamped with other things. And finally...you need money to start out with something like that. Sorry honey, you're going to have to wait on your life long dream of breeding snakes for a living :)

Bring on the summer!!

I'm extremely excited that I am finished with this semester. I took my last two finals today, and I am aiming for a 4.0 this semester, so I'll let you know in a couple of weeks when my grades come in if I got the 4.0...(fingers crossed). I actually had a really fun semester and I didn't really plan on getting a 4.0, it has just kind of worked out that way, and I'm pretty confident that I'll get it or close to it. I mean I always try to do my best, but the only other time I got a 4.0 was my first semester of college and I was only taking 2 classes at the time. The closest I got in high school was a 3.95 so it would be nice to beat my record. The classes I was taking this semester were Psychology, American Civilizations (which is the class I liked least), English, Ceramics, and Astronomy, a total of 15 credits. Ceramics was really fun but it was actually more difficult than I imagined it to be. My professor made it look so easy, but it definitely takes some skill! Below is a picture of all the work I did in ceramics this semester.

The thing in the front looks hideous, I know, but we had to learn a technique called "coiling" and my project turned out ridiculously awful--that one is most likely going in the garbage eventually. So we had to make three things of just about every assignment we were given. I ended up making 5 bowls (because in my attempt to make mugs I couldn't get the handles to work out so I made my "mugs" into bowls), 4 mugs once I finally got the handles down, 3 pots with lids (totally hard to do the lids, by the way!), 3 bottles (I still haven't figured out what the bottles are used for but we had to learn the technique of bringing the clay in), a coil project which is the ugly one in the front, and a slab project which is the tall one in the back with the ugly glaze job. I was actually quite impressed with how well I did in ceramics this semester. I have never taken a ceramics class before, and I realized that I was somehow doing better than a lot of people in the class, who also had not taken a ceramics class before, but I just have to say I am proud of myself. Especially for being the non-artsy, non-crafty person that I am I feel I did pretty well. The basic principle we had to get down was just centering the clay on the wheel, and then once we got that down we had to learn how to pull the clay up which is also much harder than it looks. I think the problem some people had was just not being able to center their clay properly and I think I had it down pretty well after a while so my stuff didn't turn out as lopsided as some peoples work. Either way, it was a super fun class!

Another fun/exciting thing about finishing up this semester is that I finished top of my class in Astronomy, without the help of Darwin, despite what some people think. He's not the only brains in the family :) He only helped me with a couple of questions throughout the semester and I did everything else on my own. Yay me! The cool thing is that I didn't have to take the final and I still would have had the highest grade, but I took the final anyway because I'll be taking another class in the fall. Astronomy was by far my favorite class this semester because I had an awesome professor, and having the highest grade in the class wasn't too shabby either. Some people are surprised that I enjoyed it so much, and because I enjoyed it so much I decided to take another astronomy class from the same professor in the fall called "Life in the Universe" which sounds intriguing, so we'll see how it goes. One thing we had to tease my professor about is that he is one of that certain group of astronomers who demoted Pluto from being a planet to being a "dwarf planet", or as my professor likes to call it "a Kuiper Belt object". My class enjoyed trying to make him feel bad for his decision, but he didn't budge. After taking the class and learning all we did about the solar system, galaxies, and the universe, it is easy to see why Pluto really isn't a planet. There is a spacecraft on its way to Pluto right now and should arrive in about 8 years, so once it gets there we'll know a lot more about what Pluto really is. I learned more in this class that I actually remember than I feel I have learned in any other class in my college career thus far, although getting a degree in astronomy doesn't sound exciting to me. There's WAY too much math involved!! Anyway, I'm sure I'm probably boring you with my blabbing so I'll leave it at that :)

Liam Jaques Perkins

We have a new addition to our family!! Of course it's not from us :) Hopefully you could tell by the heading. My sister, Shannon, and her husband, Jonathan, welcomed a beautiful baby boy yesterday at 4:59pm, 3 1/2 weeks early. He is completely healthy, weighing in at 5 pounds 12 ounces, and 18 inches long. He even has some hair! Yay! Their first child, Hannah, was born completely bald and finally started growing some hair just before she turned a one. The new baby is Liam Jaques (pronounced Jakes) Perkins, and he is absolutely adorable!! I'm completely in love with him already :) My mom was relieved that Shannon and Jonathan finally agreed on a name, and we don't have to call him "Baby Brother" anymore. Everyone in the family called him "Baby Brother" because that's what Hannah had been calling him. Anyway, I'll just let you see the adorable little evidence for yourself...

Liam Jaques Perkins

The Happy Family

It's he adorable?

See? He has a little bit of hair...

The coolest aunt & uncle ever!!

Tornado named Reagan

So, just a funny little tidbit about us Demings. We are both quite anal about the cleanliness and order of our house, and our friends like to tease us about it sometimes. Well, the McSweeney's, whom I mentioned in an earlier post, have the most adorable little girl named Reagan. She's nine months old, and we joke with them that she's not going to know who her real parents are because we're with the McSweeney's so much.


Anyway, we took Jared and Tracee out for dinner on Saturday to celebrate their birthdays (a month late, sorry guys!) and afterwards came back to our place. Well, one of Reagan's new favorite things is to pull out all the DVDs at her grandma's house, and because we have our alphabetized DVDs out in the open, Jared was encouraging Reagan to pull all of ours out so that we'd have to go through and re-alphabetize them to get them back where we prefer to have them (it's soo much easier to find the movie you're looking for when they're alphabetized!!). Below is a mischievous picture of Reagan and the tornado-looking disaster she made in our house, and this is when she was just getting started!


It was really quite funny to watch her, and Darwin pretending to be upset with her. Darwin would make a loud sound, or whistle at her every time she tried to touch the DVDs, but she would just look at him curiously, and go back to her task. Also, if you notice, in both pictures you can see that she has a cell phone in her hand. She loves anyone's cell phone she can get her hands on, and she held on to Darwin's almost the entire time they were here. She is such an adorable, funny little girl, and Reagan...you can come play with our DVDs anytime you want! (Until we have kids of our own, of coarse!)

We Finally Did It!!

So, we're a little slower than most people when it comes to finishing the Harry Potter series, but WE FINALLY DID IT! Last night at 10:40pm we finally finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, the 7th and final book of the series. I know some of you will be happy because you won't have to be so "hush, hush" about it around us anymore. The reason it took us so long is because Darwin had the idea that he wanted to re-read the 4th book again before the 4th movie came out, so we decided to read it together. Actually, Darwin reads it out loud to me, and does different voices for all the characters...he's better than the guy on the cd! We didn't actually get it completely finished before the 4th movie came out, because we mainly read in the car on road trips, but once we finished the 4th book it had been long enough since I read the 5th book that we had to read that one again. We didn't have the 5th book finished before the 6th book came out, and it was kind of a domino affect from there. So, we got behind in our reading, but we at last met our goal. We've been doing some serious Harry Potter reading in the last few weeks, so much that Darwin's neck has been hurting and his spine has been swollen from looking down at the book for so long (he's such a great guy!). But, his physical suffering and our curiosity is now over, after a long wait and great anticipation of completing the book we've so longed to finish. We both agreed that we liked the ending, after hearing from other people that they didn't. J.K. Rowling is an amazing author, and it would be fantabulous if she were to write another series just as good, although we highly doubt it. Anyway, for those of you against reading Harry Potter, I repeat my opinion that you are missing out. I highly recommend reading these amazing books!

10 Steps to a Happier Life

It seems that during our life here on this earth there are many things we are striving to achieve. One of those things is a life filled with happiness. As I was reading in my psychology text book this morning, I found a list of 10 tips on how to be happier. Here they are:

1. Realize that enduring happiness doesn't come from financial success.
2. Take control of your time.
3. Act happy.
4. Seek work and leisure that engage your skills.
5. Join the "movement" movement. (EXERCISE!!)
6. Give your body the sleep it wants. Studies show, and it's pretty much common sense, that we perform better and have more patience when we get enough sleep.
7. Give priority to close relationships. You never know what's going to happen the next day. Never let a moment pass you by to tell someone you love them.
8. Focus beyond self. Self fulfillment is found through serving others.
9. Be grateful. Hmm...for those of us of the LDS Faith, does that ring a bell?
10. Nurture your spiritual self. One of the best steps in my opinion!!

So there you have it. 10 steps from the field of psychology on how to live a happier life...now go and do it!

Tribute to the last weekend in March

Along with just about everyone else, Darwin got sick this weekend, but we've been fortunate enough that he's only been sick over the weekends so far this year and hasn't had to take any days off from school yet. (Fingers are still crossed) Despite his cold, we knew there was going to be a snow storm blowing in and decided to take advantage of the nice weather we had Saturday morning. Jared and Tracee McSweeney, some good friends of ours, invited us to spend the day with them cruising around and do a little shooting as well. We ventured down to the south-west end of Utah Lake for a picnic, but by the time we got there the wind had really picked up and the temperature dropped dramatically! Our plans for a nice picnic were almost crushed until someone came up with the idea to just have a picnic in the back of their car. I wish we had had our camera with us to capture the image of four adults and a baby crammed into the back of a Subaru Outback, crouched down, trying to eat a meal with all the picnic items piled into the middle of us. It was a great scene, and we had a blast.



Anytime you decide to have food outside in Utah, you can undoubtedly expect some company...the California Seagull, the Utah State bird. When we finished picking off all the meat we wanted from the chicken Jared and Tracee had brought, Jared threw the rest of it out on the beach for the seagulls to eat up. We had the most entertaining time for at least half an hour watching the seagulls try to fight the extremely strong winds, and each other, to snatch a piece of that yummy chicken. It's amazing the strength they have, and the determination to get some grub! One of the seagulls swallowed an entire chicken leg bone whole!! We couldn't help but laugh at our pathetic form of entertainment for the day. Good times! It's those simple moments in life that we cherish, right?